South films crass in taste but execution flawless, says Naseeruddin Shah

Mumbai: Veteran Bollywood actor Naseeruddin Shah recently shared why he thinks south Indian films like KGF, Pushpa: The Rise, Kantara, and RRR did well at the box office. He said it is no mystery why their films are doing better than most of the Hindi cinema because they work harder.

He went on to say even though south Indian films are crass in taste, their execution is flawless and imaginative. "Even the commercial movies made in Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Telugu are imaginative. They are original. They may be crass in their taste, but the execution is always flawless. I have found this for a very long time."

He added: "Even their song picturisation, even in those corny films of Jeetendra and Sridevi, insane as it may be with hundreds of matkas (clay pots) in a line, but at least it was an original idea. It wasn’t just a line of girls dancing not quite together and one central dancer," reported The Indian Express.

Speaking on a panel at the Jashn-e-Rekhta event in December 2022, he criticised Hindi cinema and said Bollywood has been consistently using stereotypes to portray certain communities like Sikhs or Parsis and making fun of others. "Hindi film hasn't left any community alone, which community has they spared, tell me. [They] are masters of stereotyping. Sikhs were made fun of, Parsis were made fun of, Christians were made fun of... the Muslim was always the selfless friend, who used to lose his life saving the hero's life at the end. But he definitely used to die."

He added that laughing at others' miseries is a national custom and we don't know how to laugh at ourselves. "If someone makes fun of us, we feel bad. We don't think twice while making fun of others. Our films have encouraged this, very consistently and deliberately."

Shah will be next seen in the Zee5 series Taj-Divided by Blood.